Star Wars 3D prints: could this life-size Jabba the Hutt be your new 'favorite decoration'?

Mar 22, 2018 | By Benedict

Mighty Jabba's Collection, a YouTube channel specializing in Star Wars toys and merch, is attempting to 3D print a life-size model of Jabba the Hutt. The project is being sponsored by filament company MakerGeeks.

Make no mistake about it, we like to feature Star Wars 3D prints here at 3Ders. All the time. As often as we can. So when we wrote about a large-scale, single-piece 3D printed Millennium Falcon last week, we were actually delighted when one reader scoffed at the project and diverted our attention to an even grander 3D printing project from a galaxy far, far away: a life-size, 3D printed Jabba the Hutt.

Mighty Jabba's Collection (MJC), the Star Wars-themed YouTube channel behind the highly ambitious project, is actually midway through the huge Jabba, and is chronicling the epic journey in the form of a series of YouTube vids.

So how on Tatooine do you go about 3D printing something so big? Seeing Princess Leia next to the giant slug-like creature in Return of the Jedi shows how large Jabba is supposed to be, and it’s fair to say most desktop 3D printers aren’t equipped to deal with objects of such magnitude.

Fortunately, one potential banana skin has been taken care of: Mighty Jabba's Collection won’t actually have to buy his own 3D printing filament, because MakerGeeks is providing tons of its White Hot White PLA for the maker to use. The 3D model, too, is handled by a third party, with MJC obtaining a Jabba model from 3D creature specialist Beast Toys.

Even with those aspects taken care of, the idea of 3D printing a life-size Jabba still seems near-insurmountable.

But MJC has a plan: hollow out the 3D model, cut it up into more than 70 individual pieces, print them individually, and eventually glue them together like an utterly terrifying jigsaw puzzle.

Despite going through a few support structure problems, the occasional spaghetti print, and suffering from the flu for a week, it seems MJC is actually doing really well with his Star Wars 3D printing project.

Using Creality CR-10 FDM 3D printers fitted with 0.8 mm nozzles, MJC has already 3D printed Jabba’s head and parts of the body, and is currently around 1/3 of the way through the entire print.

“This is easily the largest thing I’ve ever printed,” MJC says, “which I seem to say an awful lot, but it’s true. I’m not sure how I’m going to top this, or if I’m even going to try.”

A monstrous life-size Jabba is surely a step too far for most casual Star Wars 3D printing fans. If you’re inspired by the Jabba print but fancy printing something a bit more manageable, why not grab one of these 3D printable porgs instead?

Or if you feel like checking out more crazy ambitious Star Wars projects, check out our recent interview with XRobot’s James Bruton, who has stunned the internet in recent years with his working, 3D printed BB-8 robots.